MSL sky crane
A proposed Europa lander under study at JPL could use the same "sky crane" technology that successfully landed the Curiosity Mars rover (above) in 2012.

Despite what a key member of Congress called a “very disappointing” budget request, NASA is taking steps to develop a lander that could accompany an orbiter mission to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa.

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Jeff Foust has more than a decade of experience writing about space policy, entrepreneurial ventures and regulatory affairs. In 2001, he established spacetoday.net to aggregate and summarize the day's space-related news stories. In 2003, he started The...